Poor old Justin King. The smooth talking chief executive of Sainsbury's often looks as if he enjoys his media appearances, but on Thursday night he found himself in the crosshairs on the BBC's Question Time, asked to defend British boardroom pay rates, including his own.

The answer he gives is: "My salary is a matter of public record: it's £900,000." Repeatedly, he stresses that the key to Sainsbury's executive pay is that it is transparent and provides clear rewards for success.

And, of course, Sainsbury's boardroom pay arrangements are indeed transparent. Anyone who is determined enough to wade through the small print and jargon of the supermarket's annual report will see that his salary is … er, not £900,000. It rose in March of this year to £920,000.

Moreover, were King really committed to giving Question Time viewers a "transparent" answer to the direct question "What do you earn?" he might have made clear that never, since he joined in 2004, has he ever received a pay deal anything like as low as £900,000.

The latest annual report, for example, shows his total remuneration in cash and benefits for the year to 19 March was worth £2,655,000, down from £3,348,000 for the previous year. Even this amount does not complete the picture. King also received a three-year performance bonus in the form of shares worth £588,000.

Disastrous

Add it all up and the transparent figure the Sainsbury's boss perhaps ought to have declared was a pay package worth £3,243,000.

As well as the transparency point, King was also keen to stress the need for a link between pay and success. "I think that many companies – including Sainsbury's – do have that very clear connection."

Certainly Sainsbury's has not fared as disastrously as some retailers in recent times. But this might, at least in part, be down to factors beyond King's incentivised brilliance.

Would the Sainsbury's boss have made the same boasts about links between executive bonus payouts and the health of the group had the credit crunch not intervened four years ago to avert a calamitous debt-fuelled buyout of the group?

Sainsbury watchers well recall how private equity house CVC, then a Qatari sovereign wealth fund, were circling the supermarket firm, plotting a £10bn takeover in 2007.

Their intention would have been to heap huge debts on the company and flog off its considerable freehold assets. With the benefit of hindsight, it is not unreasonable to suppose that the remaining store operating business — had the takeover come to fruition — would have been very poorly equipped to weather the recessionary trends that have followed. With the benefit of hindsight, such a deal would, in all likelihood, have ended in tears for customers, staff and pensioners.

Not so, however, for King. Indeed, under his pay arrangements a sale of the business would have triggered a multimillion-pound windfall. Clearly, of course, any big payout for him would have been justified by commensurate returns for shareholders.

But there's the rub: is it appropriate for large corporations, employing thousands of workers, to be owned and run by parties heavily incentivised to sell out to anyone – including aggressive asset strippers – if the price is right?

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